Navigating Veeva Vault and Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud: Best CRM Practices for CIOs

No two organizations experience disruption the same way. Some view it as a pressing risk, while others see it as a catalyst for reinvention - an opportunity to reimagine their entire commercial ecosystem.

Understanding where your organization falls on this spectrum is the first step in shaping a meaningful response. At Indegene, we partner with clients across a full range of perspectives.

Some treat the Veeva Salesforce transition as an urgent operational risk that requires immediate action.

Others view it as a longer-term shift, allowing time to recalibrate strategies. Molecule launch vs. Migration, Global Strategy vs. Local Nuances are key themes on which customers are brainstorming today.

Many see it as a rare opportunity to address long-standing technical debt, modernize CRM foundations, and unlock the full value of their data and digital infrastructure.

From these viewpoints, a common thread emerges - how to orchestrate platform transformation without disrupting business continuity or field engagement.

How do we minimize disruption while keeping our field teams productive, engaged, and fully supported?

CIO, Top 20 Global Pharma

Our ecosystem is deeply localized and highly customized. What’s the right strategy to navigate this change without losing critical capabilities?

Senior IT Leader, Global Life Sciences Organization

From safeguarding data fidelity to managing complex migration timelines, CIOs must balance evolving technology decisions with ongoing business needs, including field force enablement, compliance, and product launch cycles.

CIOs and digital leaders are moving from isolated technology pilots to integrated enterprise transformations. From R&D to field force operations, the life sciences ecosystem is being redefined by data, AI, and rising customer expectations.

To keep pace, pharma CRM strategies must evolve from functional enablers to strategic growth platforms. There are 3 key trends influencing this shift.

1. Unify to Amplify: Platforms, Data, and Agility

Unified platforms and interoperable data architectures are becoming central to the agility of life sciences enterprises. CIOs are increasingly leading the shift away from siloed legacy systems toward modular technology stacks that enable real-time data flow across overall business functions - from clinical to commercial support.

This consolidation improves:

Speed to Insight

Faster, data-driven decision making

Personalization at Scale

Omnichannel HCP experiences

AI Readiness

Future-proofing the infrastructure for predictive and generative use cases

Compliance and Scalability

Meeting regulatory requirements across global markets

Indegene Insight

The goal is to create a resilient, AI-native infrastructure that supports every function from R&D to field engagement.

CRM platforms are no longer just systems of record today; they are strategic engines powering omnichannel engagement, HCP experiences, and commercial success. For CIOs and digital leaders, selecting the right platform goes far beyond technical specifications. It’s a foundational decision that shapes how your organization delivers personalized interactions, drives intelligent automation, and scales innovation across commercial, medical, and patient-facing functions.

The real question is: Which CRM platform is best aligned to power your ecosystem, enhance stakeholder engagement, and support continuous digital evolution?

In the following sections, we compare Veeva Vault CRM and Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud across critical dimensions: from architecture and interoperability to AI readiness and omnichannel capabilities.

While the table above outlines how Veeva Vault CRM and Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud compare today, choosing the right platform goes far beyond feature evaluation. In life sciences, it’s not just about what a CRM can do now, it's about how well it prepares your organization for what’s next. To make a future-ready decision, CIOs must look beyond checklists and consider the strategic dimensions that drive long-term success.

With Salesforce’s Life Sciences Cloud gaining momentum and Veeva CRM set to retire by 2030, life sciences organizations face a pivotal moment. Navigating this transition requires a strategic blend of foresight and execution.

Success will depend on your ability to look beyond immediate system replacement and plan holistically for the next decade. That includes aligning platform decisions with broader enterprise architecture goals, digital maturity, and the convergence of clinical and commercial operations.

Here are the key best practices to ensure long-term platform success:

Treat stakeholder experience as a core success metric

Elevate HCP and KOL engagement by equipping sales reps with unified HCP profiles, actionable insights, and smart, analytics-enabled content. Maximizing the value of CRM requires a holistic approach, unlocking the potential of adjacent systems such as MDM, consent management, and content orchestration platforms.

Build agility with composable architecture

Choose modular, API-first platforms that support rapid deployment of new capabilities across Commercial, Medical, and Field teams — without requiring a full system overhaul. Composable architecture allows for scalability, flexibility, and best-of-breed integration.

Make compliance a foundational principle

Select platforms with built-in support for GxP, 21 CFR Part 11, IDMP, and robust audit trails. Weigh the long-term cost of maintaining compliance in heavily customized systems versus adopting industry-specialized solutions that are validation-ready by design.

Design for data interoperability

Ensure seamless integration across CRM, MDM, field force automation, and analytics systems to unlock real-time, cross-functional insights. This is critical for enabling responsive, personalized engagement across stakeholder touchpoints.

Prioritize AI readiness

Evaluate platforms based on their native AI capabilities such as intelligent call planning, content recommendations, and next best actions — and their ability to govern AI in regulated environments. Establish an internal Center of Excellence for AI/ML and develop a long-term data strategy to support emerging agentic AI models.

Treat change management as a strategic lever

Adoption is the multiplier of technology ROI. Invest in intuitive user experiences, proactive training, and structured onboarding programs to ensure teams across the organization extract full value from the platform.

The CRM transition in life sciences is no longer just about choosing between Veeva Vault and Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud. It’s an opportunity to redesign enterprise engagement models, data infrastructure, and digital operations with a long-term perspective.

For CIOs, this is about creating the foundation for a more connected, intelligent, and agile life sciences enterprise.

CIOs go beyond managing IT. They’re becoming strategic architects, responsible for aligning digital investments with business growth, operational efficiency, and scientific innovation.

This shift requires more than deploying a new CRM. It demands a rethink of how digital platforms serve every function - commercial, medical, and even R&D. CIOs must unify these domains through shared data, modular infrastructure, and cross-functional interoperability.

And as AI, automation, and omnichannel become table stakes, CIOs must lead the organization in embracing a tech-forward, compliant, and insight-driven future

The path forward hinges on several key priorities: Data interoperability, AI readiness, Compliance and Change management.

Strategic Execution Requires Strategic Partnerships

To get this right, CIOs can’t go alone. They need partners who bring more than technical capabilities: partners who understand the unique intersection of scientific complexity, market dynamics, and stakeholder experience in life sciences.

This means working with allies who speak both the language of data architecture and the language of molecules, who can help navigate not just platform migration, but enterprise transformation.

At Indegene, we support life sciences organizations in reimagining CRM as a growth engine. Our platform-agnostic approach enables:

Streamlined, reusable modern workflows with standardized governance across functions.

Integrated data fabric enabling compliant, cross-BU insights.

Modular, API-first architecture that works seamlessly across commercial ecosystem.

We don’t just implement systems. We help transform CRM from a siloed tool into a strategic asset: one that fuels personalization, compliance, and speed across the business. Talk to us to learn more.